10 Things That Inspire Miranda July

By Nathan Reese

Oct. 6, 2015

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CreditCreditElizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times

“Most of the time, no one sees these performances,” Miranda July says matter-of-factly when describing her theater appearances, the most recent of which, “New Society,” comes to the Brooklyn Academy of Music Oct. 7 through 10. July, of course, is exaggerating just a bit. Her four-night run at BAM has already sold out, as did previous engagements in London, Boston and elsewhere; her upcoming shows in Los Angeles will no doubt follow suit, if they haven’t already by the time this article is published. “I think it’s sort of a theoretical idea: People love to say, ‘She’s a performance artist,’ which isn’t even really the right phrase at this point,” July says, noting that the small theaters she favors necessarily trade exposure for intimacy. But though they may be limited affairs, her shows, however one chooses to categorize them, remain a significant part of her oeuvre. “I just keep chugging along, because I like doing it,” she says.

July conceptualized “New Society” around the same time she was working on her debut novel, “The First Bad Man,” which arrived earlier this year to overwhelming critical acclaim. “I’m usually working on pieces simultaneously, so the whole time I was writing this book, I was also working on this performance,” July says. “I may have even had the idea for this whole performance before the book.” Initially, July asked the press not to describe the particulars of the show in order that the audience know as little as possible going in. “Mostly it has to do with the nature of this specific performance,” July says. “Once you see it, you realize that it’s just a nicer experience, a better experience, if you don’t know.” Now, however, the New York shows are finally going to be reviewed; and July says she’s “curious to know what people think, at this point.”

July sees her theater work as a crucial part of her early creative career. “That’s the sort of start, for me, was loving to perform,” she says. “I could’ve been one of those girls who just really threw everything into singing, dancing and acting.” As July grew older, her interests began to shift. “Maybe because I actually wasn’t that good at singing or dancing,” she says, underselling her stage presence, “it became more and more clear that I just wanted to write plays.” Nevertheless, July credits her early shows as the reason she was able make the move to filmmaking. “They would be feature length and they would involve cuts and jumps in time,” she says. “When my first movie got financed, it was because the executive happened to see my performance.” That same philosophy has carried through all the way to her latest endeavor: “I kind of think of this performance, ‘New Society,’ as my next movie, my third movie, just with a very limited release.”

On the eve of the BAM shows, T caught up with July to talk about the things that have fascinated and inspired her over the years. From trading typewritten letters with Carrie Brownstein (“I just happen to be from the generation that, like a lot of my older friends, started out writing letters”) to the ice cream-maker that’s become a family tradition (“no one’s turning a crank anymore”), read her list below.

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Looks from Toga Archive's current collection.CreditPhotographs by Chikashi Suzuki. Hair by Asashi. Makup by Sada Ito at Signo for Nars Cosmetics

Toga Archives

“This Japanese designer is a really good, surprising combination of classic/punk/pretty/ugly. I bought a red Toga Archives blouse in the summer and have been waiting for months for it to cool down in Los Angeles so I can wear it. Sometimes I get confused about if I’m coming to New York to perform at BAM or wear the red blouse. I’m always buying coats and stuff, and most of them are not to wear in my hometown.”

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CreditWin McNamee/Getty Images

Old Letters

“I used to type my letters using carbon copies, so I have my side too. I reread one of my first letters to my friend (of 20 years) Carrie Brownstein, and I’m flirting with her. I’m doing that thing where you try to make yourself sound cool and modest and straight and gay and reckless and brilliant. It was so embarrassing that I made sort of a dying sound out loud. But it’s one of the nice things about being in your 40s — your friendships begin to hold your history in a way that’s kind of funny and lighthearted. The commitment has been proven, but there isn’t the weight of a marriage.”

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CreditAndrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Carrot Soufflé

“This tastes like vanilla custard, but is mostly made of carrots. Credit goes to Amber Sealey, fellow mom and filmmaker.

Blend in blender, pour into soufflé dish and bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes.

We’re just trying to get our kids to eat vegetables. I think I was telling her how I make spinach pancakes, green pancakes, fun; and she told me about carrot soufflé. For a while I made it every single week and then I realized we’re all eating these and there’s a massive amount of butter in it, so now I’ve slowed down a little bit.”

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CreditHulton Archive, via Getty Images

Lenny Bruce

“I hadn’t watched that Lenny Bruce film with Dustin Hoffman back when other people did. From what I heard, it was so devastating. Then one night I was like, ‘Wait, I can take this. I’m an adult woman.’ The way he engaged with the present day, and politics, was a just a great way to have people know that this is real. This is really happening. It was inspiring. I wish more people said, ‘She’s the Lenny Bruce of…’ about me. Of whatever. I guess that’s the problem.”

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An installation view of "Postcards from America" at KSMoCA, a student-curated exhibition of works from Magnum Photo Agency photographers. Here, a young student looks up at a photograph by Martin Parr.CreditCourtesy of King School Museum of Contemporary Art

The King School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA)

“This is a real museum inside a very diverse public elementary school in Portland, Oregon. It was developed by artist Harrell Fletcher and Lisa Jarrett, both professors at Portland State University. I love the thought of kids taking on the responsibility and power of fine art curators. ‘As a photographer, one is used to working with a curator, but one is not used to working with a hundred curators, especially of this age group,’ said Alex Soth, whose photos were included in a recent exhibit. It’s the only museum like that. It’s like a conceptual piece to have a real high art museum in a public elementary school.”

“This column about divorce occurs so rarely that I think they might have actually discontinued it. It taught people so much about relationships. I’m happily married, but I think I’d have a better chance of staying that way if I could learn more about what derails couples. It’s also just interesting — gets to the heart of humans. Free idea: Someone should do a podcast version of this column. Which should just be called: ‘Divorced.’”

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"GAL AB I," a painting by by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, on display during an auction at Sotheby's.CreditEmmanuel Dunand/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

László Moholy-Nagy

“As a young artist working in multiple mediums, the work and especially the writings of artist László Moholy-Nagy were very important to me. He wrote things like: ‘Feeling and thinking and their expression in any media belong to the normal living standard of man.’ Which encouraged me to not worry about specialization. I probably was just being superpretentious when I took it off the shelf — like there would just be like some obscure thing. Then I actually read it, and I was like, ‘Oh, wait.’ I think I read it probably a little later, after I dropped out of college. I was struck that this historical figure was saying things that seemed relevant to me when no one else was, really speaking to working in different mediums. I think that it had seemed to me that you would be bad at all of them if you did that.”

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A scene from Athina Rachel Tsangari's "Chevalier," 2015.CreditDespina Spyrou, via Films We Like

Athina Rachel Tsangari

“She’s someone I’ve known a long time. She lived in the U.S. and had a festival called Cinematexas that was a short film festival that, as much as any festival, kind of gave me my start, and she was the driving force behind it. And then she moved back to Greece, where she was from, and kind of joined forces with Yorgos Lanthimos and they produced each other’s movies. He’s kind of a breakout star — I think his movie just cast has Emma Stone in it — but she’s just a very intriguing person to me. You may have seen her last movie, ‘Attenberg,’ which was Greece’s submission to the Academy Awards a few years ago. Rachel also produced Yorgos Lanthimos’s (‘The Lobster,’ ‘Dogtooth’) first two movies. I am waiting for her newest, ‘Chevalier.’ It’s very intriguing that this feminist powerhouse made a movie with only men in it.”

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Our Ice Cream Maker

“I thought ice cream making involved a crank and, I don’t know, dry ice or rock salt or something. I was shocked to realize for 30 bucks you could just buy the modern version. Now, you just press a button and it whirls around for 30 minutes. We made ice cream and related frozen treats all summer. This dovetails with me and my son’s larger interest in freezing anything. He’s a beginner, so often I open the freezer and find a bunch of paper in there and I just keep my mouth shut and let him work through that stage. One of our best inventions is frozen yogurt squiggles. Squeeze yogurt onto parchment paper through a baggie with the corner cut off. Then freeze. Then eat.”

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CreditCourtesy of the artist

Louise Bonnet

“Louise Bonnet is a Los Angeles-based painter of round, fleshy, almost obscene shapes and people. But hers is a very clean, friendly cartoon world, so there’s this tension between harmlessness and perversion that is totally unsettling. I like that they’re kind of creepy, but you don’t feel like saying that because there’s actually nothing in it that’s sexual. So, you feel like, ‘Oh, maybe that’s just me.’”